Tamara Loos

Research and Teaching Interests

Tamara Loos is currently writing a social history of Siam through the eyes of a reluctantly rebellious prince, Prisdang Jumsai (1852-1935). His perspective on this crucial moment in Siam’s history—when that country, at once, escaped imperial control and transformed into an absolutist state—provides a dagger-to-the-heart critique of the construction of royal cultural authority while simultaneously revealing the centrality of narrative and emotions to history.

Her first book, /Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand/ considered Siam's place as a colonized and colonizing power in Southeast Asia. It detailed the forced incorporation of Malay Muslim areas into Siam, and revealed the gendered core of Thailand's modern legal system. It is among the first historical works to integrate thoroughly both the Malay Muslim south and gender into Thai history. Her articles include studies of sex and politics, transnational sexualities, comparative law, sodomy, the family, suffrage, intimate violence, rape and notions of liberty in Thailand.

Subject Siam: Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). A book-length social and legal history of nineteenth and early twentieth century Siam that focuses on gender, justice, modernity, and national identity through the lenses of family law, the Malay Muslim south, and polygyny. http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4401

“Introduction,” Cocktail: A Play about the Life and HIV Drug Development Work of Dr. Krisana Kraisintu by Ping Chong and Vince LiCata (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009), vii-xxv. Translated into Thai.

“Competitive Colonialisms: Siam and Britain on the Malay Muslim Border,” The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand, edited by Rachel Harrison and Peter Jackson (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009).

Current Book Projects

Current Book Project: “Avenging History: Narrative, Emotion and Power in Thai History.” The book offers a social history of nineteenth and early twentieth Siam through the eyes of a reluctantly rebellious prince, Prisdang Jumsai (1852-1935). His perspective on this crucial moment in Siam’s history—when that country, at once, escaped imperial control and transformed into an absolutist state—provides a dagger-to-the-heart critique of the construction of royal cultural authority and lèse majesté laws that began under King Chulalongkorn. Prisdang, to the extent histories of Thailand mention him, is considered a disgrace at best and a traitor at worst. By following Prisdang’s footsteps, we travel from Bangkok, to London for his education, to Europe where he served as Siam’s first foreign minister to twelve countries, and then into exile, in disguise, throughout Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. Prisdang transgressed social norms by challenging monarchical authority, allegedly engaging in adulterous infidelities, contemplating suicide, and audaciously pushing the limits of his social station. For this, he became reviled by the Siamese governing class, fled into exile, exposed to imperial powers Siam’s monarch for his depraved sexual habits, became a rabble-rousing monk for fifteen years in Ceylon, and returned broken, humbled and poor to Siam in 1911. His autobiography and correspondence offer a truly unique and revealing window onto Siamese history. I focus on Prince Prisdang not to besmirch the Jakri lineage but to reveal the alternative, realistic daily lives of elites, and to capture a crucial moment in the construction of monarchical cultural authority—a construction that continues to shape power and discourse in Thailand today. More broadly, this project critiques the discipline of history’s demand for causality, which too often eclipses efforts to present a fuller, humanizing view of the social context in which decisions were made and actions taken. I weave the individualized, emotive dimension into historical scholarship to bring contingency and specificity to the writing of history. The history of Prisdang reveals subjective experiences of the world in a way that engages the reader in an intimate dialogue with history and raises exciting questions about the role of emotions in narrative nonfiction. Methodologically, it weaves together narrative and analytical history.

“A History of Sex and the State in Southeast Asia: Class, Intimacy and Invisibility.” Part of Special Issue on “International Marriage, Rights and the State in Southeast and East Asia,” to Citizenship Studies 12, 1 (Feb. 2008) (refereed).